Review #829: R - Racing Evolution

 Oh, it's the weird one...

 R: Racing Evolution was... definitely not what I was expecting. After a successful string of very Arcadey racers Namco decided to do something completely different and churn out a racing sim out of the Ridge Racer series. The sexy female mascot and the brilliant techno music are here, but gone is its trademark drifting style, in we have a lot of stats, like suspension and shock resistance, as well  as more mundane racing mechanics and even a few rally tracks.

 If there's something you won't be left wanting for here is content. Let's start with modes: Racing Life, a 14-chapter story mode in which you follow Rena's career, from driving a hospital van to professional racer. It has voiced cutscenes, which is incredible. You can also play Event Challenges, in which you can use your amassed RPs to purchase cars, upgrade cars and/or purchase multiple race events to partake in. And there are a TON of events. There's also Arcade(Think of it as VS CPU), VS Player and Time attack. To top that off, we get 11 tracks plus reverse versions of a few of those, and do keep in mind that not all tracks are for racing, some are for rally driving. I find it so hilarious that the first time we get a more than decent amount of content... is for the game that plays like Ridge Racer the least! I mean, the story mode is very cheesy, it even has a behind-the-scenes evil racing group conspiracy, but it's still a welcome addition, and there are so many events you can participate that it's not even funny.

 Namco knew that such a stark genre shift could throw fans a curve, so the game adds an optional Break Assist feature to help you with your curves, which now must be taken at slower speeds rather than using the series trademark drifting mechanics. The game also has three difficulty setting, and as the world's worst racing game player I had no trouble beating the story mode on the easiest setting. That said, while I had a brief stint with Gran Turismo 2 when I was younger, simulators were never my thing and the game failed to interest me as much as the previous Ridge Racers. The story mode has an interesting idea with the pressure mechanic, basically, drive near an opponent, swerving left to right, to fill their pressure gauge, once full they'll 'break' and drive off-road on the next curve, allowing you to easily pass them by. It's an interesting idea, but not enough to entrance me as much as getting the drifting right in previous games.

 I'm glad that this game exists. I love the fact that Namco tried something different with their formula, but... I'm sure I'm not the only Ridge Racer fan that it failed to convert. I had more fun with Le Mann's 24 hours way back when than with this one. Still, it IS a quality game, and I'm sure that people that enjoy Ridge Racer and racing simulators might get a kick out of it, but as far as I'm concerned... I'd rather get back into the real Ridge Racer.
 6.0 out of 10

Review #828: Garfield - Lasagna World Tour

 Eat. Sleep. Eat some more and then sleep some more. My kinda hero.

 I used to love Garfield as a child, so of course, I had to get some kind of game based off the feline prick, enter Garfield: Lasagna World Tour. This is an adventure-puzzle game in which you play as the orange cat alongside this frienemy, and bestest boy, Odie.

 Surprisingly, the game has two modes: A single player adventure mode, that takes Garfield through a brief expedition through Egypt, Italy and Mexico as well as a multiplayer mini-game mode. The story has Garfield trekking around the world in search of clues from a TV show that promised a prize in Lasagna. But it won't be so easy, because an evil, one-eyed grey Garfield alongside his own twisted version of Odie also want the lasagna. It has to be said, the character models get an A+, Garfield looks beautiful, and so do the rest of the characters. The environments are a bit duller, however, and the framerate is a bit spotty, but at least Garfield himself looks phenomenal. The voice acting, on the other hand, is absolutely atrocious.

 Garfield can jump, and he can attack either by kicking, if you stand still, or by spinning if you are moving. You can also call Odie with the circle button and he'll dash through anything standing in front of him to get to you. You slap Odie around, because it's fun, or you can jump on top of him and ride him for extra speed. Odie can also be called upon to dig on the ground, sometimes necessary to find keys, or, if you find a special blue bone power up, throw a bone to have Odie chase it, which is useful when there's water, deadly to poor ol' Garfield, so that you can jump on top of him as he swims towards the bone. The game has a bit of a twist, Garfield can find and wear costumes to gain new abilities. The Fakir costume lets him glide, the Chef costume grants him a fiery breath(That deals NO damage to enemies), the Soccer Player costume let's him kick Odie with precision and the Cowboy suit lets you aim in first person in order to shoot at non-deadly stuff.

 As you can probably tell, the costumes are fairly... lame, they give Garfield a single new ability and that's that. The puzzles in the game are incredibly simple, you'll barely have to think about them. Long gaps? Find the Fakir hat. Pressure platforms far away? Get the soccer costume and kick Odie. Balloons holding up objects? Shoot them with the cowboy costume. Explosives? Time for the Chef's chilli fire breath. Honestly, it's all very simple and basic stuff... which kinda sucks, because, while the game as a whole is quite short, levels feel like they go on forever and you can't save until you finish a level. Sometimes they'll spice things up with a chase sequence in which you run towards the screen, but meh.

 The game is incredibly easy, as you'll get showered with extra lives all the time. And while it isn't hard, it has a few annoyances. For instance, enemy dogs can't be killed, only stunned, which can be bothersome when you are trying, for example, to line up your Odie kicks. The instances in which you have to jump onto a moving,swimming Odie are also bad, because if you miss you lose a life. On the other hand, getting hit by an enemy removes your equipped costume, which isn't too bad since they respawn back where you found them, but they can cost you a few seconds when you go back to replace your lost outfit. Did I say that you can't kill dogs? I lied, sometimes, for whatever reason, instead of slapping them you'll trigger a best-out-of-five QTE battle, which are veeeeeeeeery slow and boring. There's a boss in the first level that also uses this mechanic. Lastly, while Garfield should be able to cling to the edge of a platform and pull himself up, a few rare times Garfield refused to grab the edge of the platform and fell to his death.

 Garfield: Lasagna World Tour isn't bad per se, it's functional and it's not as janky as other licensed game sometimes turn out. But it's boring and completely lifeless, which is shocking considering how well they managed to capture Garfield's likeness. That said, I think that fans of the license might get a kick out of seeing such a good 3-D rendition of the cat and his canine friend interacting in a playable form, but everyone else are better off abstaining from this game.
 4.5 out of 10

Review #827: Ridge Racer V

 More polygons, more tracks and even more ridges!

 And so, with the newest Playstation system at the time cam a new entry in the series, Ridge Racer V. It's pretty good, not much has changed since the past game, and thankfully, we keep analog support and split-screen multiplayer, which shouldn't need mentioning, but since Unbounded removed offline multiplayer....

 So, modes, the usual: Grand Prix, which is a collection of various sets of races, Time Trial, VS Player and Free Run to run by your lonesome, trying out cars and tracks. The game has 7 tracks that can be played in reverse, but... they are pretty lazy, man. Every track, sand the 7th one, is based on the original track of the original game, and they share parts between each other, so how each track looks kinda blends together. The seventh track is a giant oval. By now I should know not to expect much variety, but considering how good RR 7 had it... On the other hand, Grand Prix is pretty interesting. On the first GP you can play at the start you get to choose a car, and depending on the car you picked is which cars you'll unlock. So if you want to unlock more cars you have to play the first GP with another car, and then play the other GPs with the new car you unlock and so on. You can also unlock Duels against other, special cars, and once beaten you unlock them. Oh! And by playing a lot(accumulating 1500 miles) you can unlock Pacman and his ghostly enemies! Playing the game you can also unlock different color patterns to customize your cars with, which is a simple but welcome addition. Lastly, this game's soundtrack wasn't as good as the ones from the other RR games. It's still really good, but not AS good.

 At first I hated this game. I played the first Grand Prix and it was SO slow. And then I unlocked the advanced Grand Prixes as well as a faster engine for the car and... the drifting was SO bad, it felt very stiff and sluggish. And yet... I managed to get the new timing right and I learned to like it.... and then I discovered that my car was of the GRIP type. Turns out that the car I chose for my first GP, which was a DRIFT type, unlocks a GRIP advanced vehicle. As soon as I finished the game, I went back to the first GP and picked a new car and, after finishing this slow first GO, unlocked a advanced DRIFT type car, and boy oh boy, it was buttery smooth. I went from HATING this game to LOVING it so hard.

 And it's true, the driving is still based around drifting, and somehow it feels better, tighter and more responsive than in R4. GRIP type cars were never my thing, but once again, after I learned how to take curves with that car I started to like the game, but, DRIFT cars is how you should play the game, they feel so fast and drifting through corners is so much fun.

 I think that Ridge Racer 4 was a better product, it had more variety with its tracks and the soundtrack was a bit better, but as far as gameplay goes, I think Ridge Racer V is a competent upgrade on that front. It's not a huge evolution of the formula, but it feels tighter and more responsive, while the new graphics, as jagged as they are, convey a better sense of speed. All in all, a decent follow up and another excellent entry in the series.
8.0 out of 10

Review #826: Rune Viking Warlord

 Featuring Odin's floating head!

 I love early PC-to-PS2 ports, such as Rune: Viking Warlord over here. The slippery movement, the poor performance and the somewhat muddy textures that didn't make the jump to PS2 intact. It may sound like a diss, but it's anything but, I find it super charming. Rune was an action/adventure game on the PC that was well received enough to get a port to PS2, and it's more than just a port, we get new levels as well as the multiplayer mode that would be part of the PC game's expansion.

 In the game you play as Ragnar, the last surviving Viking of his tribe, who is rescued by Odin... kinda, kinda because while Odin protected you, now you must get out of Hel yourself. What follows is a story of revenge, you as Odin's Champion vs Loki and his own champion. The story is simple and unintrusive, there are very few cinematics in the game, and it's mostly just Odin's floating head checking up on you. The game has about 8 different sets of levels, it starts off in Hel and then you'll go through goblin caves, snowy mountains, viking castles and even dwarven enclaves.  All in all, it can probably be beaten in about 8 hours. I played the game on medium and it was relatively easy most of the time, a few awkward jumps over botomless pits here and there, but it doesn't get hard until the very end, which is ironic considering you get a massive power up.... but you'll need it, since you'll be fighting the hardest enemies in the games in large numbers.

 Combat is quite clearly the focus of the game, and it plays like a PC game, while combat takes place in close distances, strafing around the enemy and mashing the R1 button is the name of the game, like any PC game of its era. It's not elegant, it's not deep, but it's fun. Ragnar can carry Maces, Axes and Swords, a shield as well provided you aren't using a heavy weapon. And even between these types of weapons you can carry many of each, so in actuality Ragnar carries about 15 weapons: 5 swords, 5 axes and 5 maces. While weapons get progressively stronger, there's a point to carrying the old weapons: Each one has a unique Rune power, which consumers energy from your rune gauge. Ragnar can throw his equipped weapon by pressing triangle, which is necessary a very few times to solve some puzzles, but by the end of the game I threw away my weaker weapons since cycling with the L1 button was a bit boring, however, since powers are unique... I was compelled to keep the fourth sword, since its vampiric rune power proved invaluable a couple of times.

 Rune energy is extremely valuable, for you can only recharge it by finding yellow runes hidden throughout the level, which also means that you can't use your runic powers wily nily. Hidden through the game you may also find the elusive blue runes which permanently increase your health bar, or the more common red run that activates your berserk mode on the spot. Berserk status can be reached in two ways: By finding the aforementioned rune or by landing hits on enemies, once the red bar fills to the top you enter Berserk status. Berserk lasts for a few seconds, and you are invulnerable throughout its duration.

 Level design is what you'd expect of a PC game of its era, a tiny bit mazelike with a ton of levers to find in order to open up doors or extend bridges. Think something like classic Doom but without the keycards. There are a few puzzles here and there, but they were pretty easy to figure out. That said, the Snowy Mountains felt a bit poorly made. You have to realize that the blowing wind will carry you through gaps, and you also have to figure out that you must jump into the crevice for the wind to carry you. Then there's another segment in which the icy road cracks below you as you run, and if you fail to react and get to safety... you'll fall into currents that'll push you back to the start of the section, which quickly got boring. Platforming is as lackluster as you'd expect, which is why fact that there are so many bottomless pits or murderous lava is so surprising. But the worst part about it... the game has obscenely long loading times, and if you die, for example due to a spotty jump, you'll have to sit through another loading screen. No bueno!

 I had fun with Rune, but I'll admit that the frequency and length of the loading screens do put a damper on the experience, but luckily, that's the game's biggest problem. The combat itself is fairly shallow but also very charming, I enjoyed this throwback to an older era of PC games, I find these kinds of ports very appealing, and as janky as the game is by today's standards.... I still think there's something a bit timeless about strafing around skeletons while madly slashing around.
 7.5 out of 10

Review #825: Ys - Memories of Celceta

 This is.... what? Ys IV's third version?

 I really haven't played as much Ys as I would've liked. I loved Oath in Felghana on PC, which was my first Ys game, and I enjoyed Ys I & II on the DS, but as far as Ys goes that's all I have played... so far. Ys: Memories of Celceta is another once-exclusive of the Vita that is a sort of-pseudo remake of Ys IV. Look, Ys' timeline is weird and a lot of games got remade, some more than once, and it really doesn't matter since Ys is, according to the lore, a collection of stories about Adol, so, in a way, all versions of the same game can coexist as different versions of the same tale. I'm telling you, this is one of the weirdest JRPG timelines to keep track of.

 In a weird twist, Ys - Memories of Celceta could very well work as a your entry point in the series. Not only does it start off with an amnesiac Adol, but throughout the game as you pick up your memories you'll get a look at Adol's childhood and why he decided to became an adventurer. But getting this mute hero's memory back is but one story thread, the bigger story thread concerns Adol and a man that claims to know Adol, Duren, who undertake the town's mayor request of exploring the nearby forest and charting a full map. As you go through the city you'll discover towns, some which Adol visited, some he hadn't, as well as meet new friends and foes. To be honest, characters are pretty one-note and the plot isn't very interesting, but it's serviceable. What really drove me when playing this game was me wanting to explore the forest, not caring about how the story developed because it was so dull.

 The game's world is large enough, and while it seems like the forest is open for you to explore in any way that you want... it actually isn't. There are plenty of barriers that require a character ability or an artifact ability to proceed, so while you can take your time to explore, and you should since you get money and item rewards for charting the map, most of the time there's only one road that'll take you where you need to be and others that you'll eventually get to go through. I liked it, charting the map was fun... although the map percentage is busted, if by the end of the game you haven't got the full 100%... well, have fun revisiting every area hugging every wall, because the black fog also counts towards the map's percentage. Ridiculous.

 There's plenty of sidequests to partake in, so it pays to revisit every town after you triggered a new story event. Although it's better if you wait until you get the Golden Wing, an item that lets you teleport to ANY stone tablet you've found. At first you can only travel between tablets of the same color, which makes backtracking a bit of an annoyance, but once you get the golden wing, you can, at pretty much any time, open the map, press R and just pick where you wanna warp. As for side quests, they come in various flavors: Slay a monster, gather a material or a set of materials, help a vendor tend to his store... there's quite a bit of variety. As you go through the game, you'll come across minerals, plants as well as beast parts from fallen enemies, these can be used to refine or strengthen your weapons or use them to trade for money, which is surprisingly hard to come by. By the end of the game you'll have a six man team and it'll be very tough to maintain your healing supplies, since no character can heal, as well as everyone's equipment up to date.

 Combat is fairly fun in this game, it takes place in real time. While you have six party members, your party can only be made up of three, although you can pause at any time and swap party members. You take control of one character while the AI takes control of the other two, and you can press circle to swap between active party members. AI allies deal less damage, but also take less damage and can't die, since their health bar never goes below 1 HP, so you don't really need to babysit them. What takes the most getting used to is how loose the combat is, even your basic square attacks will propel your characters forward. And it's weird at first, but eventually you'll get used to moving all over the place as you fight. Every character has a different weapon type: Slash, Blunt and Pierce, and some enemies are weak or strong against a certain type. I didn't care about this system, and bosses don't have any weakness or resistance, so I just played with the party I wanted to play with.

 But that's only half the fun. You also get a dodge and a block button, and if you time them right you'll get a Flash Dodge or a Flash Block, which will slow down your enemy for a few seconds, allowing you to retaliate with free hits. And if that wasn't enough, every character has access to a ton of special moves, although you can only equip four at a time, used by holding R and pressing the face button they are assigned to. Special moves can level up as you use them, and they run on a 100 energy gauge, skills costing 40 energy at most. You can recover this energy by landing hits and defeating enemies. So, basic hits charge your energy for your special moves, and special moves, in turn, fill another, yellow gauge, once full you can press the L button to unleash a powerful super move. It's a good system, and it's very dynamic too, since you recharge your energy by landing hits you are encouraged not to store your energy for 'tougher enemies'. And tougher enemies there are! Besides bosses, you may come across particularly tough monsters, which you can try to avoid or try to defeat for a higher amount experience points than regular enemies.

 One of the game's biggest problems is how annoying it can get to proceed through the environment. First, the 'puzzles' which aren't actually puzzles, y'see, each character has a different ability: Ozma can strike walls, Karna can shoot daggers, Duren can pick locks. The 'puzzles' are as simple as selecting the appropriate character, pressing triangle and watch what happens. You don't have to think too hard, although, to be fair, the final dungeon does have a few brain teasers. Regardless, this means that if a character isn't in your party... you have to pause the game, enter the party menu and swap them in to do their trick, then go into the menu, go into the party section and swap them out again. This is a regular occurrence with artifacts, you'll come across a steep wall that you must run through, or rocks you must break, or need to get smaller to go through a cranny... Once again, you have to enter a menu and equip the appropriate artifact. At least artifacts get a shortcut, you can press the tiny red button on the HUD with your finger to open up the item menu, from which you can use healing items or swap your equipped artifact.

 I liked Ys: Memories of Celceta, and... it kinda rekindled my interest to invest in the rest of the series, like, I really want to get a physical copy of Oath in Felghana for PSP. But I digress, Memories of Celceta is a fine RPG that fails to stand out, but succeeds in being really fun.
 7.5 out of 10

Review #824: Killzone Mercenary

 The Vita at its finest.

 I had never played a Killzone game before, and my, oh my, what a fantastic first impression Killzone Mercenary makes! It's not just a great little game, it's also a brilliant showcase of what the Vita could've done. I've been playing a lot of Vita games that... didn't look all that great, like Mortal Kombat and Ys VI, and as good as Ridge Racer looked it struggled to maintain 30 fps. But Killzone Mercenary looks almost as good as a PS3 game, and maintains a steady framerate to boot! This is the future the Vita promised. This is what the Vita could do.

 The game pits you as mute hero Danner, a merc for hire that is currently hired to battle the Helghast, space nazies, through small skirmishes that begin with him and another buddy rescuing a ISA commander. I knew very little about the series' lore, and while the game didn't really ease me into it, I had no trouble following the story. The story is quite cliched, so much so that its twists fail to impress, but very early into the game I realized that I wasn't here for the story, I was here for the gameplay. The story's main drawback is that it's told mostly through boring de-briefing segments before each mission, working as a sort of veil while the game loads, and you can skip them as soon as the game does so. The game comes with two modes, a 9-mission long single player campaign as well as a online multiplayer component. You can replay story missions, and after beating them for the first time you gain the option to replay them with three different sets of mini missions for better money rewards, mini-missions such as scoring X amount of head shots with X gun, only using X guns, finishing the mission in under X minutes, etc. Considering that the story campaign is lengthy enough, I think it's not a bad offering.

 Mercenary follows the modern FPS blueprint to a tee, regenerating health, two weapon maximum and melee kills in one hit. That said, since you play as a Merc, the entire game is built around money. Killing enemies, and how you kill them, reward you with money, achieving certain milestones, such as killing everyone stealthily without being noticed, or using a certain type of weapon for a long time, will also reward you with money. You can then spend this money on new weapons, the only way to swap them, get new armor, get a drone or get grenades. The thing about the armament in this game... there really isn't a 'best' weapon or 'best' drone or 'best' armor, every piece of weaponry has different stats and functionality, so it's not like there's a 'best' gun. This means that it's easy to get a loadout that you really like and never change it, heck, you can do just fine with your original loadout. I never changed my armor since the starting piece was perfectly balanced with resistance and mobility. This also means that money quickly loses its purpose, and while you can use it to instantly refill your ammo and bring your drone back from its cooldown period.... you can just as easily refill your ammo from fallen enemies. This is probably why there's a small fee for re-equipping armament you already purchased.

 The game has this beautiful weight to it, running and jumping around feels so satisfying thanks to this. It also makes the game a bit more slower paced than you'd think at first glance, but I really liked it. Controls... do the best that they can. For example, since there are not L3 and R3 buttons, sprinting is done by pressing circle while moving, and crouching is done by... pressing circle while standing still. It's not ideal and may ruin your stealthy approach, but it's not awful. Being an early Vita game, it has a lot of mandatory touch controls. You can disable in-game touch button, which is neat since it cleans up the HUD, but it also means that the ammo counter is gone, because it's tied to one of these buttons. What where they thinking? I learned to live without knowing how much ammo I had left. Regardless, this doesn't do away with every touch feature. Menus are entirely touch based, but since they don't have scrolling, they work much better than they did on Ridge Racer. There are a few in-game hacking mini-games that are entirely touch based, and are quite dull to be honest, but most of them are optional. While I claimed that melee is a one-hit kill, I lied a bit, the melee button triggers a 'swipe the screen' QTE, which can fail if you swipe the wrong way. As a hater of all things touch/motion that aren't optional... I learned to tolerate them because the game was just THAT good, which is pretty much exactly like what happened with Uncharted - The Golden Abyss.

 On one hand, Killzone Mercenary is the perfect showpiece for the Vita, but on the other it's also a great first person shooter. Not only does it look amazing, it also features very satisfying gameplay, I mean, every headshot you land turns into a delicious pop of their heads. They could've gone with an upgrade system to make money matter a bit more, but I'm not complaining because the game is great as it is, and definitely one of the finest games on the system, no wonder Call of Duty and Resistance on the Vita reviewed so poorly, this game set the bar too high.
 8.0 out of 10

Review #823: Ridge Racer(Vita)

 Ridge Racer 7 - Shareware Edition

 These last couple of months I've been finally delving into Ridge Racer, and now it's time to delve into the black(est) sheep of the family, its Vita release. What this game is, in a nutshell, is like a demo of Ridge Racer 7, you get the same amazing gameplay, but 10% of the content... unless you pony up some cash for the DLC, which I'll never.

 What you get with this pathetic little cart is 3 courses and 5 cars. That's it. It's pretty much on par with the classic Ridge Racer games, but that era was long gone by then, so there's absolutely no excuse. I'd like to say that the picked 3 of the best tracks from RR7, but every track in that game was a winner, so I can't even claim that, but at least you can play all three tracks on reverse, I guess. The Single Player content is pretty much non-existent: Spot Race, which is a basic 3-lap race on any course you wish and Time Trial. The rest of the modes are exclusively online, which is pretty much dead so they don't count. You are meant to play the single races on the same three tracks over and over again, which will slowly upgrade your car, making you faster, while the CPU racers get stuck with their old machines, making it easier and easier. You also rack up points which you can use to add abilities to your car, such as change the way Nitro works and how you charge it. I mean, I was done with the game less than an hour in, but soldiered on through two more hours because Ridge Racer 7 was amazing and this game is pretty much a demo for RR7.

 The game comes packed with 7 different songs, and these are the best songs in the entire series. And that's saying something considering the entire series hasn't disappointed me yet with their OSTs. The graphics are quite good, all things considered, but the game struggles to maintain a 30 fps, I mean, it's acceptable, but sometimes it'll drop a few frames even when you are driving by your lonesome. Since this was an early Vita release it HAD to use its features, which means that the menus are exclusively touch-based and they are rather finicky, they should've gone with big, static buttons instead of menus and options you can scroll through. I mean, just like with the framerate, the menus are acceptable, but they are far from being an ideal in-and-out of the game.

 Despite the game being a complete failure as far as content goes, the game plays exactly like Ridge Racer 7. You got your big emphasis on drifting, you get a three-tier nitro gauge that fills as you drift and can be used with different multipliers: Use a basic nitro, X2 nitro or X3 nitro, managing it at your leisure. Even with a mediocre framerate the sense of speed is fantastic, and the amazing soundtrack makes it an easy game to get lost into. They also added a new blue/red static filter every time you collide with something which felt quite cool.

 This game presents me with the same conundrum the classic RR games did: The gameplay is top-notch, but there is no content. However, the truth is that it was easier to be more forgiving on the older games due to the era they were released in. That said, the fact is, this game has three completely unique tracks and a more refined driving system. That's why I'm gonna go with a 5.0. It has pretty much no content, true, but the gameplay is fantastic. I managed to get three hours worth of fun out of a measly three tracks, so that's gotta count for something.
 5.0 out of 10